YMMV / Lois Lane

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• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Lois Lane, plucky heroic female ahead of her time or a ditz who can't stop looking for trouble?
  • Is Lois in love with Superman or Clark Kent without even realizing it?
  • Was her decision to reveal Clark/Superman to the world in Superman: Truth a Moral Event Horizon, or a relevant act that fits journalists today?
• Base-Breaking Character: Depending on who you ask she's either an awesome character or a Designated Love Interest.
• Can't Un-Hear It: Fans tend to hear Dana Delany as Lois Lane whenever they are reading her lines from just about anywhere, particularly because Delany has regularly voiced Lois over the years and her voice-acting handles Lois' snark incredibly well. Pauley Perrette and Grey DeLisle are also well regarded as Lois Lane voices go.
• Damsel Scrappy:
  • This is the characteristic once strongly associated with her. Ironically, it can be argued that Lois' role as a Damsel in Distress was far more important to the Superman plot than her role as a love interest, Depending on the Writer. In the 1940's, she did need to be rescued a lot (usually while pursuing a news story), but was fairly intelligent and could sometimes get herself out of scrapes by kicking ass and taking names. Once the 50's and 60's came around though, she constantly put herself in danger for no reason, and her sole goal in life was to have Superman marry her. From the '70s onwards and in other media she's a much more well rounded and developed character, who is extremely competent and able to take care of herself. She still needs to be rescued sometimes, and the trope may pop up occasionally, but for the most part she's a very independent, intrepid and intelligent reporter who just needs a little help against super powered aggressors from time to time.
  • The sixties-era book Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane seemed dedicated to making sure every single reader hated poor Lois. If you Google around, you'll find scans of multiple letters columns where readers asked for Superman to spank Lois (which would in fact occur, though in the context of Superdickery).
  • Even when there's neither any Super Villain's ill will nor a big scoop one jump away from her window, she can be trusted to find something dangerous. Letters on the label are bigger than her eyes, so... they just don't fit in, right?
  • Starting late in The '70s comics, Lois was written to be more assertive to avert this trope, and needed rescuing much less often, including in her solo stories in The Superman Family. This included Lois having mastered a Kryptonian form of martial arts named "klurkor."
  • Being associated with this trope is probably what spurred John Byrne, in his Post-Crisis retelling of Superman's origin, to make it very, very obvious that Lois was now an Action Girl. This eventually led to an Inversion immediately after her wedding to Clark when he was kidnapped after temporarily losing his powers. Lois took her Army brat background to extremes, becoming a G.I. Jane in order to come to the rescue.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Lois Lane's constant tendency to make spelling errors had fans theorizing that she has dyslexia or dysgraphia.
• Fair for Its Day: The "I Am Curious (Black)!" story was actually widely praised for being a sensitive look at racial relations... when it was first published. Similarly, there was at least one story where Lois was rendered temporarily blind, and it dealt with the subject in a non-patronising manner... by the standards of the Silver Age.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: On the letters page of Lois Lane #83, a Ms. Marilyn Marsh wrote in to complain about boys' fashion getting more feminine. The editor responded by saying that Superman definitely wouldn't have "shoulder-length locks". Some 25 years or so later, and The Last Son of Krypton came back from the dead with The Super-Mullet...
• Never Live It Down:
  • The '50s comics and Took a Level in Dumbass version continues to hamper her reputation rather than the far more interesting The Golden Age of Comic Books character.
  • Lois Lane often gets mocked for being a supposedly brilliant journalist who can't tell that Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same. Leaving aside the two decades or so Post-Crisis in which she was Clark's Secret-Keeper, stories about Lois strongly suspecting (but being unable to prove) the truth date all the way back to 1942. It doesn't help that any depiction where she knows right from the start ends up being the victim of They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.
  • This seems to be the case for the Superman: Truth storyline, when the New-52 Lois discovers Superman's secret identity and blows it to the entire world like some tabloid sleaze!, though most fans see the development as Audience-Alienating Era since that is something no version of Lois in any adaptation would ever do.
    • This point is even referenced in Superman: Lois and Clark, in which Pre-Flashpoint Lois is flabbergasted at her counterpart's decision, especially with the consequences it has for her Clark's and their son's future.
    Lois: She outed him! How could she destroy his— our lives like that!
• Older Than They Think: The Xenafication Lois received with the John Byrne Post-Crisis 1986 reboot didn't actually invent the idea of her being a Damsel out of Distress, it was actually returning her to her Golden Age roots—where she really was quite the badass—and undoing the wimpification that the Silver Age had inflicted on her (this is very similar to how the 1970's also saw Batman shed his goofy Silver Age persona and return to his gritty roots). Indeed the only part of her badassery that was actually new was the part about her coming from a military family, as this provided a backstory for how she achieved her toughness.
• One True Pairing: After more than 70 years of romance, Lois Lane and Superman is the ultimate/true pairing. When they are not together, they still have a fair amount of Ship Tease. Lois is nearly always paired with Superman in adaptations or parodies (and it certainly helps).
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Her relationship with Clark/Superman comes off as this in some stories.
• Ron the Death Eater: With a bit of Die for Our Ship. While Lois has been occasionally written unsympathetically, some fans insist that she is just straight up awful person, excluding her good points and ignoring Clark’s own less than pleasant behavior. Her portrayal during Silver Age for instance is commonly brought up, ignoring that beside being a case of Depending on the Writer, Clark would just as often be needlessly cruel, condescending and manipulative towards her.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Between fans who prefer Superman with Lois Lane, who prefer him with Wonder Woman or him with Lana Lang.
• Super Couple: Pun aside, Lois and Superman, also nicknamed "The Power Couple", have pretty much achieved a mythical couple status since the 1930's. Actually, no other super-hero and his love interest, to this day, have had not one, but TWO TV shows solely devoted to their relationship.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In one Golden Age story, Lois reluctantly goes on a date with Clark, but spikes his drink so he'll pass out and she can chase after a lead. With spiked drinks becoming synonymous with date-rape in the 21st century, this one moment can make Lois' early incarnation seem Unintentionally Unsympathetic.
  • While many comics fans reading older issues see Lois as a Damsel Scrappy for pestering Superman, it must be noted that Lois Lane's comics in the 50s were best-sellers and despite being a non-powered supporting character, she was one of the most popular women comics at the time. Likewise her golden age version of Lois, as pointed out by Alan Moore, a strong independent news journalist was a good deal more modern than Love Interest in other stories from that era or afterwards.
  Alan Moore: She is a newspaper reporter, and had been so since the days when women newspaper reporters were very few and far between. Not only that, she is a star reporter whose byline is known and respected throughout Metropolis, if not the free world in its entirety. Now, if you think about a character like that realistically, you'd imagine that for a woman to have come so far she'd have to be capable, determined, tough and extremely resilient, wouldn't you? As opposed to being dopey, vain, gossipy, lovesick and accident prone? Sure you would. But the people at DC at the time obviously felt otherwise.

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